Am I alone in not being impressed with the connectors used for eSATA. On my new Dell system, if I so much as look at the lead the wrong way, the connection breaks/makes VERY easily.

There seems to be some acknowledgement that this is an issue as you get some eSATA leads that come with a spring clip that keeps it better retained.

Pic below shows the type i mean.

Anybody got a good link to a cable they would praise highly?

If you find one, let me know, please? I haven't found anything very secure either. It's abou the same integrity as a 4pin 1394 connector.

eSata connector are crap, one of my 500Gb HDD's eSATA plastic broke off, they would to replace the drive saying it has physical damage! Can you believe that, as if its my fault that the eSATA connector has a designing flaw. These things just break for no good reason.

eSATA connectors are of poor design. I think it's one of the reasons why Apple
avoids dealing with eSATA. A storage device should not have a cable connection that
breaks connection by barely being jostled but that's what many are experiencing with
eSATA.

Hopefully they redesign the connector for the next generation and add alot more stability and durability.

The connectors are poor. I avoid touching them at all. If moving my PC case, I pull the cable and re-attach after moving to avoid problems. It is a small price to pay for such fast external storage, IMO. I've been using them for about two years and I guess I've just accepted them. I was very irritated with them initially but over time I got used to them.

I was wary of this as well, but was able to cut at least half the risk out, by buying a E-sata to Sata cable and then threading the cables into my case and directly onto the sata slots of my motherboard. My case has little rubber gromits where water-cooling tubes can be inserted, but they're perfect for the cables.

The drives respond just like my other drives so I can capture right onto them with no problems.

What I hate, is that some of the drive-cases are molded poorly, so in a couple cases (once with one of mine and once with someone else's) I had to use an x-acto knife to make it a little wider.

I dont have a solution so far. This will be of interest though.

USB 3.0 will crush eSATA, FireWire: Blogs - Under the Microscope - ZDNet Australia (http://www.zdnet.com.au/blogs/under-the-microscope/soa/USB-3-0-will-crush-eSATA-FireWire/0,2001098126,339294329,00.htm)

The red cables are the absolute unmitigated pits worst sinful piece of cut price profit taking innovation ever malignly visited upon humankind.

The plugs (jacks in americaspeak) seem to shove onto flat pieces like HDD's circuit boards themselves. Providing the conductive foil on the boards does not detach and roll back like on some video boards, it is a valid and proven method used for years.

The cable fit into the plugs is poor and they eventually come apart. A noisy cooling fan and let's face it we put up with them, is enough to shake the cable into resistive or open circuit. either at the joint or internally.

All the things need to work properly is a longer shoulder by about five more millimetres and a positive retention clip which appears to have been introduced and maybe a wire hairspring retainer down each side of the socket to keep the plug centred and firmly clasped.

Thin down the plastic insulation to make the cable lighter and more pliant and it is a good innovation.

The cables themselves are not compliant and exert more stress on the already inadequate plugs and sockets. One would be tempted to imagine that certain failure was one of the design parameters.

The red cables are the absolute unmitigated pits worst sinful piece of cut price profit taking innovation ever malignly visited upon humankind.

The plugs (jacks in americaspeak) seem to shove onto flat pieces like HDD's circuit boards themselves. Providing the conductive foil on the boards does not detach and roll back like on some video boards, it is a valid and proven method used for years.



Actually in America the plug is the male end and and the jack is the female end just like in Australia.

In my experience the SATA plugs without the lock work better. The release always seems to be awkward to press and damage can be done trying to release it.

John

Alistair,

I'm pulling out what's left of my hair over this issue as well! I purchased a Dell XPS Studio 435MT in January as my primary edit computer. I purchased a Fantom 1TB external drive with USB and eSATA connections. After installing Vegas 8.1, DVDA, Quicktime Pro and a few other goodies, I connected my HDV camera to begin digitizing all the footage I'd shot over the last 4 days. But my eSATA drive wouldn't mount; I tried and tried, checking BIOS (it was there) but I couldn't get Vista 64-bit to recognize it. Finally I connected it using USB and voila! the drivers installed. Then I reconnected using eSATA, and it worked for just one day. When I powered up the computer the next morning, my eSATA connection was gone (from BIOS as well).

I notieced that there is an electrical "pop" heard through my monitors when the eSATA cable is plugged/unplugged from the computer, and I've begun to suspect an electrical issue is at work here?

I spent a whole week on the phone with Dell XPS customer support. They escalated the issue up the ladder, and I actually recieved a replacement system last week. But alas, still no eSATA connection. I've now requested an RMA for the Fantom drive and cable ...

This is nuts!

I bought a new eSATA cable, just to be safe, when they replaced my system, and have only been brave enough to use one caddy of my two possibles.

On my second system, so far, it's worked great.

Here's hoping I dont regret just typing that!!!!!!!!

Why did Dell replace your system? I was pleased with the XPS customer support, better than standard Dell support for sure.

My eSATA connection died after behaving like your did. Have a sniff of the port and if it smells a little bit burnt (as opposed to the normal electrical smell) then it may be a gonner.

Could not get my Dell to recognize my eSATA drive. BIOS gave device not detected error. Bought a second drive to see if the drive was the problem. Nope same problem. Spent a week with a very helpful Dell tech on the phone but could not get it to work. Dell has sent me a new MoBo and is sending out a tech to install it this Friday. Hopefully that will do the trick. Dell support has been very friendly and helpful (and understandable) but unsuccessful.

That sounds like three of us with Dell XPS systems that have had the same problem. They were going to replace my MOBO, however, as my system was barely out of the box, they just sent a complete new one.

As far as the search for a good connector goes the nice spring loaded ones I mentioned appear to only be available for internal SATA connections not eSATA ones.

Anyone else found anything worthwhile?

If not, I can feel a Blue-Peter moment coming on!

I was wary of this as well, but was able to cut at least half the risk out, by buying a E-sata to Sata cable and then threading the cables into my case and directly onto the sata slots of my motherboard. My case has little rubber gromits where water-cooling tubes can be inserted, but they're perfect for the cables.

Still no solution. I think this is the best solution so far. The lead i showed on the very first post is actually what you need for this setup SATA with spring lock at one side, and eSATA with precious little locking at the other end. So...at least one end will be held firm inside the pc and retained somewhat by the grommits. All you have to rely on for the eSATA side are the tiny spring blips shown in the attached picture.

Best I can offer is to (with the cable unplugged!) carefully tease these out just a little, so that you have a fraction more tension to hold the plug in situ.

Alternatively, make a little L bracket up from a piece of right angled plastic and put some heavy duty double side tape on it to then stick/hold/brace the cable in place.

Anyone else found anything else?

I have given up trying to get the ESATA connection on my Dell to work. Would never recognize anything connected to it. Bought an eSATA board and put it in the 435 and I now can run my eSATA external drive (both of them).

What kind of card did you buy Terry? Adaptec?

Sorry I've been absent for a couple of months, but I wanted to report that the eSATA connection on my replacement Dell Studio XPS is working properly. I was never certain if the problem was my eSATA connector, the eSATA cable or my eSATA 1TB external drive, but after replacing all of them it works.

Now if I could just get Vegas 8.1 to work on my 64-bit machine, that would be something. 8.0 runs fine on it.

Don't feel badly Sam. I could never get 8.1 to work properly for me either.

It was really sad to find that the 64 bit version of 9 isn't worth much on my PC either, but there are others for whom it works fine.

Wee question for any of you Dell XPS users that were reading this thread. Have you noticed that your internet connection seems to hang every time the eSATA drive spins up/down from a hibernate state?

Alastair, you might go into Windows and change the power settings to not turn off your hard drives after 20 minutes if you haven't already.

I had same issue with external esata drives and that fixed it for me.

Was STILL getting it even after that. Ended up going even further into the advanced power settings and setting the Allow Hybrid Sleep to OFF. So far....seems to have worked.

Jeff,
Better late than never :>)
Yes, it was an Adaptic card and it is still working, but not without some kinks. I have to have the eSATYA drive booted up (turned on) when I boot up my computer or the puter freezes on boot up. Its still upsetting that Dell would sell me a computer with an eSATA port that would not work and they can't even fix it.

Terry, I don't know the reason why, but with eSata drives I have found, regardless of the controller used, that the drives connected to eSata controllers must be powered on prior to windows being booted up or the drives will not be seen. So this is how it is "supposed" to be.

These drives/controllers are not hot pluggable as USB and Firewire are, at least not the ones that I've had.

I've always been able to hot-swap eSATA drives. The only issue I've ever had was on a Toshiba laptop--the drive needed to be initialized and formatted before Vista 64 would see the drive--but that caused the whole thing to lock up regardless of the drive being on. Just initialized/formatted it on a different computer...

eSATA is *supposed* to be hot-swappable, and for me, it always has been, across Abit and Asus motherboards, and an Sil3132 card.

Thanks,
Matt

Actually since you mention it I guess they are as long as their is a drive powered up and connected at boot up, then you can switch them. If no drive is powered up and connected atwindows boot up then the controller bios aren't loaded and you can't then expect to see a drive that is hooked up after boot up is done.

Mine behaves itself in that respect. I can power it up after boot up and swap drives at will. My problem was the every time the drive went into/came out of hibernate (you heard it spin down/up) the PC would go sluggish and the internet connection would just hang/freeze.

An update on my ESata situation. After reading Jeffs post I decided to retry my built in eSata but by powering up the drive before booting up the computer. Low and Behold IT WORKED. I now have my ESata connected to the bulit in port rather than the added card AND IT IS WORKING. I could have sworn we tried that before we replaced mother board but maybe not. Any way, it seems to be working. Now I have 2 extra ESata ports.

Yes Terry, if the bios for the card aren't loaded with the drive already powered up then the drive won't be seen. Glad it's working for you now.

I've read through the problems several of you have had with eSATA on the XPS 435MT. I would like to install a bare drive caddy in the empty 2nd DVD bay on my XPS and wonder if anyone here has tried that. Here are my questions:

1. Will the caddy fit in the bay - it looks like it would be a tight squeeze to get it in.

2. Can you easily remove the front door to the bay?

3. Will a SATA used in this manner be hot swappable in this computer?

eSATA connectors have always seems like a hastily-thought-out "enhancement" to (internal) SATA connectors to me.

Let's hope Intel's Light Peak (http://techresearch.intel.com/articles/None/1813.htm) will soon supercede it.

Light Peak looks like an idea whose time should have come years ago - SPDIF/TOSlink for audio has been around for what? ten years at least? and Light Peak looks like similar technology to me - low cost, robust, high bandwidth - what more could you want of an interconnection system?

Let's hope everybody adopts it, and it becomes a genuinely cross-platform standard.

...I would like to install a bare drive caddy in the empty 2nd DVD bay...
3. Will a SATA used in this manner be hot swappable in this computer?
I installed an IDE caddy system in a hard drive bay my editing computer a few years ago, at the same time I installed the same system in an external enclosure.

I never use the caddy internal bay, because, while technically it is "hot swap", I can't power down the drive independently of the PC. I find the external much more useful for this reason.

Not sure if this will apply to SATA caddy - but worth checking out before you purchase/install.

Having said that, a caddy system is GREAT! Those old projects are extremely accessable, I use it all the time!